


crossfade (cursed and blessed)

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (also Harrison being Jewish), (also hello Natalie being Jewish), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, If Modern!Leia is Jewish (which she is RIP Carrie), I’m putting a dubcon warning on this, The Purim AU that I didn’t need to be writing but here we are, also this fic discusses the American political arena if you don’t want that in your fanfic be warned, because they’re both gonna be totally not sober and you can’t give consent if you’re not sober, but since they’re both not sober we get into that shady area of ????? so, dubcon, then Modern!Ben is too you cowards, there are both drugs and alcohol in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 20:46:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: The Talmud states that on Purim one is to drink to the point of not knowing the difference between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.”  In other words, you’re supposed to get so blitzed you can’t tell your friends from your enemies. Rey and Ben might be taking this a little too literally at Leia’s annual Purim Party.





	crossfade (cursed and blessed)

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this a few days in advance of Purim in the hopes that you will enjoy it as part of your Purim shenaniganry. I made a gifset to accompany it which you can find [here](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/171270393787/in-other-words-youre-supposed-to-get-so-blitzed).
> 
> Once again, many thanks to [V](http://thereminnsonata.tumblr.com) for taking a gander at this before I posted.

“Purim?” Finn asks, looking at the card. He glances at Rey. “Am I saying that right?”

“I have no idea,” she replies.

“It’s the General’s annual Purim party!” Poe says, throwing his arms around both of their shoulders. “It’s a Jewish Holiday. Lots of drinking. I don’t think I have ever been as drunk as I have been at the General’s Purim parties. Like it puts New Year’s Eve to shame.”

A flutter of a memory crosses Rey’s mind. A raging party that she and Finn had missed because they’d been doing fieldwork in the southwest, determining how best to help with preventing the border wall. But she never connected the dots that it was a party that _Leia_ had hosted.

Rey’s never heard of Purim. She’s heard of Hannukah because that happens around Christmas, and she knows about Passover because that happens around Easter, but Purim…

“What _is_ Purim?” Rey asks.

Before Poe can answer, she hears Leia’s voice drifting over from across the office. “It’s one of our ‘you tried to kill us but you failed so we’re going to ritually drink’ holidays. Only during this one, the Jewish People were saved by a clever queen named Esther. So naturally, it’s my favorite.” She winks at Rey as she comes over. “You should dress up in costume. That’s part of how we celebrate. Also, if you don’t come into the office on Thursday, I’ll consider all of you weak. We all suffer our hangovers together. I’ll bring bagels for everyone.”

 _Costume?_ Rey looks at Finn, alarmed. She doesn’t own a costume. But apparently, she’s going to a drunken Jewish costume party on Wednesday night.

* * *

 

“She does this every year?” Finn asks Poe as the three of them get out of the Uber they’d taken to Leia’s house.

“Every year,” Poe says, grinning.

Finn’s dressed as Batman, he’s dressed as Superman, and Rey’s dressed as Wonder Woman. 

“And HR hasn’t put a stop to it yet?” Finn asks. There are tons of people inside—they can see that through the window already.

“As if HR could stop Leia Organa,” Poe laughs, throwing his arm over Finn’s shoulder.

HR hadn’t been able to stop her when she’d brought out a handle of whiskey the day after the 2016 election. _“It’s the anniversary of Kristallnacht and the American people just used my people as a rhetorical device to keep this man out of office and then didn’t even fucking listen. Who’s drinking with me?”_ the General had demanded defiantly as she’d poured whiskey into her _I’m With Her_ mug. Rey had been close to tears most of that day and had not refused the offer of some insobriety to take the sting off a day that had felt like the world was ending. She hadn’t felt so hopeless in years, and she prided herself on hope. Hope had carried her through those first few years without her parents after all. But Trump’s America had burned the hope right out of her, and righteous rage had replaced it.

“Can we get inside, please?” Rey asks. It’s February, and it’s _freezing_ , and Finn and Poe might both be wearing spandex that covers their whole bodies—and capes—but she’s wearing a Wonder Woman costume that is totally sleeveless.

“You could have brought a coat,” Poe points out as they make their way up the snow-lined walkway.

“That someone would vomit on? I think not,” Rey responds. Bad enough that she has to tuck her phone into her costume because it doesn’t have pockets, but she had been sure to bring only it with her tonight because she has been to Rose and Paige’s New Year’s party. She’d had to buy a new coat after it because it had been in such bad shape.

They enter and the party is already in full swing, with music playing loudly from the stereo system in Leia’s very nice living room. People are sitting and drinking and a few of them have some sort of noisemaker in their hands, dangling limply.

“What’s with that?” Rey asks, pointing to one of them.

“You missed the megillah reading,” Kaydel tells her. “It’s for that.”

“The what?”

“Reading of the story of Esther. The General does a reading every year. You’re supposed to make a lot of noise whenever Haman—”

One of the people standing near Connix begins waving a noisemaker loudly, and shouts, “Now, now, none of that. We don’t say that name in this house.”

“ _His_ name,” Connix finishes, rolling her eyes. “Some people are taking it too seriously, even though the reading’s over. The General’s going to be annoyed that you’re late, Poe,” she adds, turning to Poe.

“Hasn’t the General ever heard of fashionably late?” Poe asks, puffing out his chest like Superman.

“Maybe, but she said you’d signed up to act out one of the parts.”

Poe frowns. “I don’t remember signing up.”

Connix shrugs. “Well, you’ll have to make your amends, I’m sure. Probably will require a shot or two.”

“And who am I to deny her?” Poe says. “Come Justice League. To the bar!”

* * *

“Did you see the guy in the Darth Vader costume?” Finn asks.

“Who could miss him?” Rey says. “He’s like twelve feet tall.”

“I think he hotboxed the helmet.”

Rey’s eyes widen. “You can hotbox a Darth Vader helmet?” she asks. “That feels…dangerous?”

“I don’t know, but it definitely smelled like weed, and when he exhaled… _hoooopaaaaa_ ,” he imitated Darth Vader’s ragged breathing. “Or should I say _gaaaanjaaaa_.”

Rey laughs.

She’s feeling particularly giggly. Maybe it’s the warmth of the party, or the fact that Rose had run up to her the moment she’d laid eyes on their group, hugged her, and told her she was the perfect Wonder Woman. “ _All tall, and Amazonian, and so full of heart!_ ” Rose had slurred, her cheeks flushed with Asian glow and her eyes shining as though she were about to cry with joy. She was wearing all black and had cat ears on.

 _“Catwoman?”_ Rey had asked her, and Rose’s eyes had lit up.

 _“Ohhh I didn’t think of that!”_ she had squealed delightedly. “ _That means I fit in with your group costume!”_ She’d run off to find Finn, who was doing another shot with Poe, and Rey had trailed after her. Finn had picked Rose up and spun her around and insisted on a group picture in which all of them were a little bleary-eyed and Rey’s cheeks were flushed.

“Another one,” Leia commands, appearing at her elbow and handing Rey a plastic shotglass. The General is dressed as a queen, her hair in elaborate braids and wearing a crown and a silk scarf headdress. “You’re not nearly drunk enough.”

“I’m pacing myself,” Rey complains.

“One does not pace oneself on Purim,” Leia tells her. She clinks her own shotglass against Rey’s. “L’chaim.”

“Le…whatever you just said,” Rey says.

“To life? Oh come on, you have to at least seen _Fiddler_ ,” Leia teases, aghast.

“Diana here grew up in Themyscira, and doesn’t know anything that’s been written by or about the Jewish People,” Poe says, elbowing Rey and grabbing a shot glass from the tray that Leia had placed on the counter.

“You’re still in the doghouse for being late, so you can stop sucking up, Poeseph,” Leia tells him, and Poe sputters his alcohol right out of his mouth.

“Poeseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat!” Rey hears herself say very loudly.

“That’s your costume next year,” Leia says, patting Poe on the shoulder and handing him another plastic shotglass. “Now try and keep it all down this time.”

The house is bigger than any Rey has ever been in, and she stumbles from room to room. All around her, she sees photographs—pictures of Leia with her father and mother, with the twin brother she’d magically found when she’d been in her late teens, pictures of her with a boy with of dark hair and a long face, and then with a man with that same long face and his dark hair buzzed short standing in uniform of some sort who could only be Leia’s son Ben.

“Air Force?” she wonders aloud. She definitely knew what division he’d been in at one point.

“Marines,” and she almost jumps out of her skin because Darth Vader is standing behind her. Finn’s right—he really does smell like weed.

“Did you know him?” She knows so little about Leia’s son. There are whispers that he voted for Trump, and that his mother—who spends nearly all of her limited free time working with the #Resistance—hasn’t spoken to him since.

He pauses, for a moment, considering. Then Darth Vader tugs off his helmet and a shock of dark hair falls from it and she finds herself facing Ben Solo. Unlike the uniformed young man in the photograph standing next to his mother, his eyes are extremely bloodshot and his pupils are extremely dilated and even if Rey didn’t know that he hot-boxed his Vader helmet, she sees quite clearly that he is high as a kite right now from the way he’s staring at her.

“I thought she doesn’t talk to you. Why are you here?” Rey blurts out.

He weighs the question before answering. “Because I come home for holidays,” Ben replies. He’s staring at her as though transfixed, and Rey’s never been high before, but Poe definitely has and she’s seen the way he fixates. Ben’s staring at her Wonder Woman headband.

“Is Purim a…big holiday?” she asks.

He doesn’t reply immediately. He just keeps staring at her. It’s like he hasn’t heard her.

“Ok, never mind,” Rey mutters, turning away from him and making to push past him. Ben Solo, she decides, is either too high or is just trying to make her uncomfortable.

“To my mother, it is,” Ben as she’s just past him, and she turns around. He’s still staring at where she’d been. “It’s no Pesach or Yom Kippur, but it’s a holiday.”

“Oh,” Rey says.

“Wait what?” It’s like there’s a thirty second delay between what he hears and what she says because now he’s turning and staring at her again. He’s blinking, and is clearly confused.

“You’re too high to talk,” she tells him.

He stares at her, then, a little bit later, says, “I’m not too high to talk.”

“Did you vote for Trump?” she asks him because she can’t help it. She’s not going to stand here talking to a ridiculously high Trump supporter, even if he _is_ Leia’s son.

She waits the thirty seconds, anticipation in her gut, then—

“I didn’t vote for Clinton.”

“Well, you can fuck right off,” and she whirls around and marches away from him. “Vader was a good costume idea. Oh, and one selfish good deed at the end of _Return of the Jedi doesn’t_ redeem the evil he did for twenty years.” She doesn’t actually believe that last bit about Vader, but she’s mad at him—mad at anyone who’d vote for a liar and a predator and fuck over the rest of the country.

* * *

After her next two shots, Rey decides she desperately needs food in her stomach. Leia has a good spread on the table—bagels, smoked salmon, about twelve kinds of cream cheese, capers, pizza, and a whole table of little triangle cookies with fruit filling. Rey tries one, and it’s the best thing she’s eaten, so she stuffs another three into her mouth, trying each of the flavors that she can see on the table.

When she reaches the end, she sees a plate that’s nearly empty and has a sign next to it that it takes her several tries to read because her vision is blurry and the handwriting—definitely not Leia’s—is very messy and she has no idea how the word is supposed to be pronounced.

_“Special” hamentaschen._

She can guess who made them, given how much he’d smelled like weed.

“If you want to get high, let’s go out back. That’ll take another hour to set in for you at least.”

Ben’s standing behind her, and she supposes enough time has passed for him to have sobered up a little bit because he certainly doesn’t seem quite as out of it as he did before. His helmet is gone—she suspects he’s forgotten what he did with it—and he’s holding two shotglasses. He passes one to her.

“I didn’t vote for Trump,” he says. She narrows her eyes at him, taking the shotglass. He clinks his against hers, and says, “L’chaim,” and downs it. She watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, and he licks his lips lightly when he’s done. He has remarkably full lips, all plump and red. She raises the glass to her lips and downs it too, letting the sting of the alcohol take that last thought away from her.

“But you didn’t vote for Clinton,” she replies.

“No,” he says, and he seems at least to be able to respond without waiting fifteen seconds now. “She’s a fucking corrupt establishment politician.”

“Bernie or busssst?” Oh she’s started slurring. That’s good. She grabs another hamentaschen and shoves it into her mouth.

“I just said that’ll take you like an hour to get high. If you want something faster…”

She’d grabbed one of the special hamentaschen. Oh boy, she was going to be so fucked tomorrow. Guess it’s time to stop drinking?

“Anssswer the quesssstion,” she says, poking him in the chest. The plastic breastplate he’s wearing doesn’t even have real buttons on it. She wants to press the buttons.

“I wrote in,” he replies.

“Bernie?”

“Harambe.”

“What state?”

“Ohio.”

“What the _fuck,_ you voted for a _dead gorilla?_ ” she shrieks at him, and shoves against his chest.

“I’m not going to vote for anyone who runs on a platform that’s not going to shake our roots. American society is built on a fractured past and that past needs to die. So yeah, I’ll vote for a dead gorilla over anyone who’s going to perpetuate a broken system.”

“At what cossst?” she knows she’s being loud, but the music is also being loud and everyone’s dancing and drunk and she’s drunk too. “How many people are getting fucked for this.”

“Yeah, and what presidency saw that happening on his watch? Both parties are garbage. Throw a brick through the establishment and rebuild.”

“You monssssster,” Rey says, and this time she slaps him across the right cheek. “I don’t know how to tell you that _you ssshould care about other people_.”

She pushes past him, knowing she’s not walking in a straight line and not caring at all.

“I guess I’m just some irredeemable asshole then,” he shouts over his shoulder as he rounds the corner and Rey makes an inarticulate snarl at him.

“Wonder Woman could kick Darth Vader’s weak assssssss!” she shouts back.

* * *

 

“What is hamentasssschen?” Rey asks, leaning into Poe’s shoulder. Poe seems to know the most about this holiday. He’s come to Leia’s Purim party before, and he’s known Leia for forever.

“It’s a cookie,” he says, quite unhelpfully. When Rey huffs in frustration, he adds, “It’s shaped like Haman’s hat.”

“There was ssspecial hamentassschen on the table,” Rey slurs at him. “I had some by accccccident.”

“That feels in the spirit of the holiday,” Poe replies. “Though I can’t fathom Leia having made them.”

“Ben probably did,” Rey replies.

Poe gives her a look through hooded eyes. His eyes are like everyone else’s: bloodshot.

“Is Ben here?”

“Yeah.”

“And you talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you find out if he voted for Trump?”

“He voted for Harambe.”

There’s a pause.

Then.

“Oh, I’m gonna fucking murder that asshole.”

* * *

 

Poe doesn’t murder that asshole. He takes another two shots and after that hits the point of too drunk to remember his own name, much less why he was angry at Ben Solo.

“Ben!” Poe yells with delight when they come across him coming back inside after clearly having gone to smoke another joint. “How’s it going?” He throws his arm around Ben and looks at Rey and Finn. “We went to space camp together,” he says. “Did you know that? That’s how I met Leia to begin with. Come on. Get a picture of us.”

Ben is laughing the unending laugh of someone who is far too high, and Rey takes her phone out of her bra and—

“Woah. You can keep shit in there?” Poe asks, stumbling back towards her. “That’s so clever.”

“Do you want this picture or not?”

“What picture?”

“You and Ben.”

“Ben’s here?” Poe turns around. “Ben!” He throws himself at Ben again. “How’s it going, buddy? Why’d you have to vote for Harambe?”

Ben’s still laughing and Rey’s surprised to notice that his face is really quite nice looking when it cracks open in a smile like that. He pats Poe on the back and Rey snaps a picture of the two of them and shoves her phone back down her costume. Poe is hugging Ben now. “You just had to go and turn to the dark side. You cause your mother so much pain, you know? All the time. She doesn’t deserve it.”

Rey brushes past them and goes to the counter where Leia is still standing, pouring more and more alcohol out into shot glasses. “Who are you dressed as?” Rey asks. She had forgotten to ask earlier.

“Queen Esther, obviously,” Leia responds. “Can’t you tell? I’m so young, and beautiful, and my husband will do anything for me—like save the Jewish People from certain annihilation.” A sad look crosses her eyes. She raises her shotglass and hands another one to Rey. “To my poor, dead, ex-husband.”

“I—” Rey begins to say _accidentally had some of your son’s special hamentaschen and so I should probably stop drinking,_ but Leia gives her such a look that she raises the glass and intones, “To Han,” before she downs the shot. Then she reaches for another and takes that one too, because fuck it. “Your son voted for Harambe.”

“I know. We’ve had words,” Leia says. “The only reason he’s allowed here is that he’s trying to redeem himself. I’m not sure he can. It’ll depend on how the midterms go.”

“He wants to break the establishment,” Rey says. She doesn’t know why, but she needs Leia to tell her…she doesn’t know what. Her brain is too mushy.

“He spent too much time in his philosophy classes and forgets that for every philosophical ideal there’s blood on the ground. I’d have thought the Marines would beat it out of him, but the PTSD only made it worse.”

“Where did he serve?” Rey asks.

“Two tours in Iraq, flying helicoptors. Damn good pilot, or so I’ve been told.” She picks up another shotglass. “To my poor, dead, ex-husband, who taught my son to fly. And didn’t teach him the common sense not to vote for a dead gorilla.”

* * *

An hour passes, and Rey thinks she’s starting to sober up. She’d stopped drinking and definitely still feels a _little_ bit of a buzz, given how much had been in her system to begin with, but most importantly she doesn’t feel anything remotely…abnormal about her state of mind. She’s used to drunk, and has seen Poe blazed out of his mind before, and can tell that the two are different experiences. But this still feels normal. She’d heard that sometimes people don’t get high their first time. So maybe she’s dodged a bullet.

She laughs with Kaydel, who has also stopped drinking, and takes a video of half of the team singing along far too loudly to “Don’t Stop Believing” when it comes on through the stereo system, and laughs because they all have different ideas of where the notes should be.

“They’re going to be really worse for wear tomorrow morning, aren’t they,” she says to no one in particular. And it’s when she realizes that she’s saying it to no one in particular that she decides to go find Finn.

Finn has been oddly absent from her side over the course of the evening—which is probably how she’d managed to find herself at odds with Ben Solo as much as she had—and she hopes he’s doing ok. He has a good alcohol tolerance, but especially as she feels herself begin to sober up, and seeing just how many people are blackout, she can’t help but feel guilty that she hasn’t checked in on Finn. _This isn’t college,_ she thinks, remembering how she and Finn would always keep an eye on one another at parties, _I’m out of practice._

She pokes her way through the first floor, the General’s study, the kitchen, and, at last, the pantry, where she finds Finn being pressed against a wall by Rose, their lips locked and his hands in her hair. Her little cat ear headband has fallen to the ground but neither of them seem to have noticed and Rey smiles to herself as she backs away unnoticed.

She’d seen that one coming for a while. They’d had a project together towards the end of last year, and ever since then it had been the two of them dancing around one another. Rose had known what she wanted, and Finn…

Well, Finn seems to have worked out what he wants.

Rey feels oddly lonely all of a sudden. Finn’s her brother in arms, her _we finish each other’s sentences_ friend, and she wants him to be happy. She really does. But it catches her off guard, and so she goes into the kitchen and takes another shot all by herself this time, because fuck it—she doesn’t think she’s going to actually get high from Ben’s weed cookies.

* * *

 

Rey’s definitely not seeing straight by the time she ends up sitting on the back porch, staring out into the snowy backyard of Leia Organa’s house. She doesn’t remember how she got there, just that she got there and the white snow against the pitch black night is very pretty. Her face is numb but in a fuzzy way, not because of the cold. That’s strange. It’s weirdly ticklish.

A black cloak is dropped over her and for a second she thinks it’s Finn’s Batman cloak until a deep voice says, “You’re gonna get hypothermia,” and she notices how much like weed it smells. Rey makes her eyeballs look up.

“Do you feel bad about voting for Harambe?” she asks him.

“No,” he replies.

“Then go away.”

He doesn’t. Rey’s arms are very heavy, so she can’t shove him properly either.

“My voting for Harambe, as infuriating as I know it is to my mother, doesn’t explain Clinton’s losses in Wisconsin and Florida.”

“It didn’t help,” she mutters.

“No, it didn’t help,” he agrees. That helps.  She keeps staring out at the light and the dark in front of her. It really is very pretty. Maybe this is why people take black and white pictures. Maybe this is why people talk about the bleak beauty of winter. Rey hadn’t thought about that until this moment. She’s been too busy complaining about how much colder it is than in New Mexico all winter.

“Throwing a brick… through the window of the establishment isn’t going to work,” she thinks she manages to say, “People are just going to end up hurt.”

“More than they already are?”

“Yes,” she says and her mouth keeps going and she marvels that it seems to be doing so well while her mind is full of the contrast of light and dark. “Who do you think is going to hurt the most? The ones who are already hurting. The ones you want to fuck up are going to have enough money to make it through. They’ll be uncomfortable, but they’ll make it through.  Have you never studied any revolution in your life?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Are you Vader growing a conscience, or are you too stoned to process what I just said.”

“More drunk than stoned right now,” he replies. “You?”

Rey looks out over the snow. She can taste the way the cold feels in her mouth—like a frightened gasp. Her vision seems to sparkle with the stars. Or maybe it’s short circuiting. It’s not drunk-blurry, though, even if she can’t see straight.

Her hand finds his and she squeezes it. She hadn’t realized how cold it was until his hand is burning in hers.

“We seem to have missed each other,” she says at last. Her voice feels light in her mouth, and she wonders if it’s light the way snow and stars or light, or if it’s light the way her hair is when it’s newly dried.

“Happens,” he says. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a joint. He lights it, and takes a drag briefly before blowing smoke out into the air. It’s so thick and grey because of the cold. Rey stares at it, the way that it uncurls like water before dissipating.

“Do that again,” she whispers.

“How fucked up do you want me to be?”

“You’re already fucked up. Do it again.”

So he does. He inhales more deeply this time, and exhales more slowly and some of the smoke comes out of his nose this time and it looks like his soul is escaping through his lungs, unfurling and grey in the cold moonlight and losing itself in the bleak black winter night.

He raises the joint to his lips again and she grabs his hand. “Don’t,” she says.

“Think I’m gone enough?”

“Too far gone,” she says because she doesn’t know how to say she’s worried about his soul escaping into the winter.

He keeps his eyes on her as he inhales from the joint one last time, then exhales and stabs the remaining joint on the deck and pockets it again.

He stares at her and she stares at him and the whites of his eyes are so red and the browns of his eyes are so black and the colors of them seem to pop out of his face.

Time freezes like water, like air.

Rey notices the vibrations of the music inside seeping up from the ground underneath her change in color and in intensity. They do it again. No time has passed. She can’t stop looking at Ben’s eyes.

And he can’t seem to stop looking at hers.

She was angry at him.

She can’t remember why.

His soul seeping out of his mouth, maybe. Or before that. He’s still staring at him and she’s still staring at her and she can’t remember why. It can’t have been that important. The only thing that’s important is the way his eyes feel, the way his cheek feels when she makes one of her too heavy arms move to run her fingers over it.

He closes his eyes at her touch.

She doesn’t want that.

She wants her hand to go away but it won’t. It stays there on his skin. She can feel the roughness where stubble is starting to poke its way through. Or maybe that’s how the cold makes skin feel.

His eyes are back. They’re glowing at her, red and black like that. When had his eyes gotten so close to her. Does he still have some soul in there?

His lips are nudging against hers, and she can taste the weed on his breath as she kisses him.

She’s not used to her capillaries doing that. Or maybe she never noticed before. Her lips feel in different ways, like they’re crackling the way his lips feel to her brain in overdrive, like every nerve in her head is glittering at his touch.

“Woah,” she mutters into his mouth.

“You’ve never kissed anyone stoned before?”

“I’ve never been stoned before.”

“You always remember your first time,” he says and she finds herself laughing, laughing so hard she can’t stop, laughing until she’s keeled over and resting her head on his shoulder and laughing into his shitty plastic Darth Vader costume. His hand finds her back and he rubs over it and plays a little bit with her hair, based on the way the strands pull across her scalp. It feels nice. He feels nice. This feels nice. She can’t remember why she was angry with him. She just wants to keep feeling that glittery feeling whenever he touches her. She wants to feel it forever, wants it never to stop.

“Poe always says that sex when you’re high is really good,” she hears herself suggest.

Ben doesn’t respond immediately. “Are you asking?”

“Would you want to?”

He pulls her to her feet and his cloak falls to the ground at her feet. Neither of them bother to pick it up, though, and he’s leading her back inside. The music is so loud, even from the kitchen and Rey sees plastic shotglasses on the counter—empty with golden remnants of whatever had filled them.

People are still drinking, though there are fewer of them now. Leia is seated in a throne-like armchair in the living room, regaling Poe with some story, while Finn and Rose are sleeping on the couch, heads leaned against one another. She sees as if in slow motion—Leia’s eyes flick to her and Ben and their joined hand, her eyebrows twitching in concern, and the unasked question flashes in her eyes. But Rey smiles at her and Leia gives her a steady look before turning her attention back to Poe.

The zipper is stuck on her Wonder Woman costume and they end up having to rip it off her, giggling into one anothers’ lips the whole time. It’s not like she’s ever going to wear it again anyway. Her phone clatters to the floor from out of her bra when they finally get her loose from it, and Rey tells it to shush because it’s making too much noise, which it does when it stops moving. Ben sinks to the floor, laughing and Rey crouches down next to him too because why not and soon they’re both laughing on the ground—him still in his Darth Vader costume which looks really really stupid without its cape and helmet, and Rey in her bra, Wonder Woman Skirt, and the spandex that she had decided worked with the costume. Somehow his lips connect with her cleavage and the laughter stops all at once.

His kisses are sloppy against her skin, open mouthed, hot and wet, and she didn’t know she could feel her own skin this way, somehow feeling how soft it is even as his lips suck at it. She reaches one of her heavy arms up to run fingers through his dark hair, marveling at the softness of it, the silkiness of it, softer than any fabric she’d ever touched before.

He’s kissing his way up and down her chest, and she closes her eyes and lets the warmth of his lips wash over her as she traces circles into his scalp. She can’t tell if time is passing. Does time pass when things feel good like this? His lips nudge at the cup of her bra and she reaches behind her back and unhooks it, letting it drop to the floor. Immediately he latches onto one of her nipples and Rey gasps as his tongue rolls over her flesh, sloppily teasing it into a stiff peak that he starts to nibble at lightly, his teeth sending a hum through her body as she clings to his head. She bends over it, rubbing her nose and lips through his hair, relishing the way the softness of it feels against her buzzing face, inhaling the scent of weed and shampoo and him, all blending together so perfectly. How had he made it blend so perfectly together? Had he planned it?

She kisses the top of his silky head, and he shifts his head from her left breast to her right, a big hand coming up to twist her left nipple between his fingers and fuck that feels amazing, the way her whole body seems to be vibrating and numb all at once. No. Not all at once. Everything’s that fuzzy numb except her nipples and her lips and her skin is still buzzy and that sparkling sensation but that’s nothing compared to the way her nipples feel and the way his hair feels and the way everything just _feels_ , no thoughts or words or emotions, just sensation.

She shifts and the floor is hard under her legs and she whispers into his hair, “Bed?” Or maybe “Ben?” His hair is in the way. He gets the picture though and his hair is gone and it’s his forehead under her lips now and now it’s his lips under her lips again, and his lips feel so good against hers, all plump and red and soft. He rubs his nose against hers and breaks the kiss and she misses how exactly but a moment later they’re up on his bed and he’s peeling away the dumb plastic breastplate of his Darth Vader costume and the black shirt he’d been wearing underneath it and Rey stares at his bare chest. She wants to lick her way across every muscle that’s there because he’s got a lot of them and she pulls him down onto the bed so she can start. She kisses and licks and nips at his skin as she makes her way down his stomach, then across, then back up and across his chest. His hands are in her hair and she loves the taste of his skin in time with the way her scalp is being pulled this way and that, like parting water, like loving wind. She bites his nipples lightly and looks up at his face to see his reaction. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are closed, and he looks either very out of it or very into it, and quite probably both.

She kisses her way back down his stomach again, letting her tongue swipe into his belly button for a moment before continuing on the path down to his belt. She unbuckles it clumsily when she gets there and when she looks back up at him, he’s watching her, his eyes bloodshot and hooded.

“I don’t have a condom,” he says, looking sheepish.

“Are you clean?” she asks him.

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re not gonna be in me,” she says. She unzips his pants and tugs them down his legs, then pulls his cock out of his boxers.

She had been wrong. His hair wasn’t the softest thing she’d ever touched. The skin of his dick was. Soft like velvet, but thinner—no not thinner, he was thick, thick enough that she was glad she wasn’t letting him in her tonight, and god so long—the _skin_ seemed thinner. She runs fingers gently along his shaft, marveling at how something so stiff could also be so soft. It isn’t the first time she’s touched a dick before. Far from it. But her own skin had never felt like this when she’d pumped her hands over someone else’s cock. She’d never noticed the way blood pulses through the veins of it, and she bends down and runs her tongue over it. She can feel his pulse through that vein on her tongue! The gentle tattoo of his heart right there in his dick, and right there in his chest. Does she take his heart in her mouth when she licks her way along his shaft until she’s reached the tip of him? Dicks and hearts aren’t the same thing, but she can feel his heart there, throbbing in his dick. She swirls her tongue over the tip of his circumcised penis and then bobs her head down, taking him into her mouth.

His hands are in her hair again, and she can smell the musky scent of him as she moves her head back and forth. It’s only him now—no additional mix of weed and shampoo and she likes the way he smells, the way it fills her nose as she breathes him in. He’s too thick in her mouth for her to do much except move up and down, her hands catching some of her saliva and pumping at the base of him. It only makes the skin under her hands softer, and she didn’t know that was possible. She looks up at him and his eyes are closed, his head tilted back, his mouth slightly open. She swirls her tongue over the tip of him and she feels his dick twitch in her mouth and she can taste a drop of him now—tangy and salty and something else too. She wants to taste more of it. She likes the taste of it, it’s rich on her tongue and she presses the tip of her tongue into the hole at the end of him and he groans and his fingers tighten in her hair. But she doesn’t get more of him.

She sinks her mouth deeper onto him again, and his hands are limp in her hair again. She feels a bubbling under her fingers, against her tongue, and then he dribbles into her mouth again and she circles her tongue around the tip of him, getting every drop she can. Why does he taste this good? It’s obscene. Literally obscene. That thought makes her laugh, which causes him to shift up onto his elbows. “Something funny?” his voice is defensive, and she wants to stop laughing, but her body won’t let her she’s too high. He seems, at least, to recognize that part of what’s happening as he scoots down the bed and kisses her neck while she hoots with amusement.

“Sorry,” she gasps. “I just…” and she collapses laughing again. Ben’s hand drops down to the skirt she’s still wearing and he unzips it. He reaches a hand down between them, sliding it into her spandex, into her underpants and she stops laughing, her breath hitching in her because god that feels good. She’d gotten slick at some point, and the slow circling of his finger against her clit puts nearly every thought from her mind.

Nearly.

“You taste good,” she inhales as she says it, because his finger twitches against her as she’s saying it and that’s got her veins feeling lighter than air in her body.

“And that was funny?”

“The way the thought…” she begins but if her mouth had somehow supplied words on the back porch, it is decidedly not doing that now.

Ben kisses her, then pulls his hand out from between her legs. She whines. She wasn’t ready for him to stop yet. She never wants him to stop. He slips his finger into his mouth and smiles slowly.

“You taste good too,” he says. Rey leans forward and kisses him, wondering if she’ll catch some of herself on his tongue, if he’ll catch some of himself on hers. His tongue feels so nice against hers. Every part of him feels so nice against her. With a lurch, she wishes he had a condom. She’s high, but she’s not stupid, and she’s not letting his dick anywhere near her vagina if he doesn’t have a condom, but she imagines the way he’d stretch her, and how good that would feel while her skin is all abuzz and she feels everything right in her mind. _Maybe some other time._

She kisses her way back down his chest and wraps her tongue around his dick again. This time, she doesn’t laugh when she thinks about how good he tastes. She lets her hands travel from his shaft, flattening against the panes of his abdomen, or tracing lines over his thighs. She lets her lips and her tongue do the work on his cock, and by the time he’s warning her that he’s coming, she holds him in place as he spurts into her mouth the best thing she’s tasted all night.

She drinks him down, swallowing the rich, salty, bitter taste of him, until he jerks his hips away from her and pulls himself out of her mouth. He’s panting heavily and staring up at the ceiling and she kisses her way back up his chest to his neck and sucks at the skin there while she waits for him to come back down.

He turns his head and kisses her forehead and whispers, “That was—you’re—amazing.” His lips find hers and she slips her tongue between his teeth, wanting to taste more of him again. His mouth is sweeter than his come, and there are layers to it—she can taste the whiskey, and the weed, and the him as he tilts her so that she’s lying on her back and his hands fumble with her skirt and spandex. He kisses his way down her chest, nuzzling between her breasts while his hands tug the last bits of her clothing down her legs. The spandex get caught at her ankles and he has to wrestle them loose.

He throws them across the room and they hit a lamp, nearly knocking it over and they both burst out laughing, the air in her lungs dancing as her diaphragm contracts over and over again. Ben kisses his way up her legs before settling himself on his stomach, his legs kicked up behind him, nudging his nose against her slit and bringing her thighs up so that they’re resting over his broad shoulders. He looks at her when he licks her, and her breath hitches because his eyes are so blown and bloodshot and there’s an intensity she’d not been expecting given what state of mind they’re both in. He hums slightly as he licks, and his eyes drift closed and she doesn’t for a second think that he’s performing well given her experience with being eaten out, his mouth just as sloppy now as it had been when he’d kissed breasts her earlier.

But the high in her mind more than makes up for it, because every time his nose bumps her clit, she sees stars, every muscle in her body rolls, and it’s like she’s adrift in the galaxy. She rocks her hips into that galaxy, and he gets the picture, shifting his licking from her slit proper and into the nebula and Rey has to hold onto something because otherwise she’ll get lost in all of it, the universe that he brings to life inside her somehow with his tongue and his silky hair between her fingers.

His name falls from her lips as he nudges his teeth—so very lightly—against her clit and she presses her cunt into his face, needing to feel what happens when she gets too close to the stars, wondering how it is that she’s breathing this hard in the vacuum of space, how her heart is fluttering like a hummingbird in her chest, how her throat is so dry and how she keeps moaning his name, again and again, begging, praying…

Her orgasm is oddly silent. No roaring of blood flowing through her ears, her heart, her cunt, no gasping for air. Space is silent, and so is Rey as she throbs and warmth floods her and her skin seems to fizzle with the force of it all. She is floating among the stars, and her body is every light she can see in the darkness, and she’s still floating when Ben climbs his way up her again, pressing his chest against hers—is hers heaving? She hadn’t noticed. He kisses her gasping lips and she hears her breath suddenly, and brushes her hair out of her face and she feels her heart pulsing again. He wraps his arms around her and curls around her and she can still feel the sparkling when she presses her lips to his neck, and lets herself breathe him in until she falls asleep.

* * *

 

Rey wakes in Ben’s bed, her head buried into the crook of his neck. It is bright enough in the room for her to know that she is undoubtedly late for work. Indeed, she thinks she woke because her phone is buzzing from work messages that are undoubtedly ones she’s missing. And, remembering with a jolt what Leia had said upon inviting them, she’s sure that the messages likely contain some vicious shaming that she would not present herself in all her hungover glory at the office like everyone else who had a shred of decency.

She turns to fumble on the ground for her phone, but Ben tugs her back to him.

“Ignore it,” he says quietly, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her neck. “They’ll get on without you.”

“They’re going to be taking the shit out of me for not being there today,” she says. Her head is buzzing a little bit from the drinking of the night before, but not nearly so much as she’d expected. She does feel disoriented, but not in a hungover way.

“Let them,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.” He kisses her again and Rey closes her eyes and decides that no, it doesn’t matter. She’d definitely rather be here than there.


End file.
